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Process documentation Data Transfer from External Systems  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Purpose

In order to enable extraction of data and metadata from non-SAP sources on the application level, SAP BW provides open interfaces - staging BAPIs. BAPIs (Business Application Programming Interface) are standardized programming interfaces that offer external access to the business processes and data of a SAP system. These interfaces enable connection between various third-party tools (such as Extraction, Transformation and Loading) and SAP BW. In this way, for example, data from an Oracle application can be transferred to SAP BW and can be evaluated there.

Process

The metadata can be defined or updated manually in the transfer structure maintenance in SAP BW. If you access BAPIs with a third-party tool, this tool can also automatically read the metadata from the source system without a request from SAP BW or it can define the metadata and then transfer it to SAP BW using BAPIs. SAP BW also offers interfaces with which third-party tools can create the metadata in the BW system.

Data transfer can take place via a data request from SAP BW or can be triggered by the third-party tool via BAPIs.  The third-party tool loads the data from the external system and transforms it into the corresponding SAP BW format. Ensure that the structure of the transfer structure and the structure of the data structure for the extraction tool correspond to one another. Transformations for technical cleanup (such as date conversion) should already be implemented on the level of the extraction tool.

You can find more information on data transfer using staging BAPIs in your SAP BW system in the BAPI Explorer (transaction BAPI). On the Hierarchical tab page, choose SAP Business Information Warehouse    Warehouse Management.

See also:

Maintaining InfoSources (External System)

 

 

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